Conclusions

The Pedagogy is the Medium is the Message

Only in retrospect did we fully understand the integrated relationship
between the course content and shared forum space. Theoretically, this
activity could be used to discuss any of the common freshman
composition topics. However, by participating in this online discussion
about the purpose and meaning of the university, the students were
beginning to enact the very university they were discussing. One of the
themes for the semester was applying Kenneth Burke’s (1941, pp. 110-111) famous
parlor metaphor to the experience of education, and as students engaged
famous thinkers past and present, they joined other students in a
unique manifestation of the interminable conversation of history.
Because the final posts stressed connections over conclusions, many of
the threads never reached a decisive answer about the issues under
discussion. In their final papers, which often acknowledged aspects of
the forums, many students revealed that they had more questions than
answers about the university and that it was a subject they would
continue to explore. Most students seemed to understand this
conversation would continue long after the forum space disappeared,
that the purpose of the university is always under discussion as it
adapts and changes with the culture around it.

As instructors, we also noticed that the course ideology tended toward
a civic model of the university and away from more Platonic, Kantian,
or German models. The semester set up these competing/converging models
for students to identify and debate, but the structure of the forums
inherently favored a civic, communal approach over an idea of the
university as knowledge transmission or individual transcendence. Their
discussions of the university already positioned them within a model
that favored community interactions and socially determined
epistemology. These discussions were sometimes dynamic, sometimes
agonistic, sometimes meandering, but always focused on networked
relations. For future implementations of this course, we are still
trying to determine how forthcoming to be about this ideology, but
savvy students may have picked it up.